Generally described, computing devices and communication networks, such as the Internet, can facilitate various interactions among individuals. As applied to financial transactions, the integration of computing devices and communication networks has created expanded opportunities for entities, such as individuals and/or businesses, to complete transactions. In the simplest embodiment, two entities can transmit relevant financial information, such as account numbers, and/or personal information over the communication network to complete a transaction. At the same time, however, the expanded transactional opportunities can create additional concerns related to the exchange of detailed financial account information, such as bank account numbers, and/or personal information. In one aspect, the parties to a transaction may be hesitant about revealing detailed financial information and personal information because of the potential for fraudulent use of the information, especially if the other entity is unknown or not trusted. In another aspect, the parties to a transaction may be cautious to exchange financial information because of the potential for processing erroneous transaction information by one party, such as incorrect quantities, transaction amounts, or duplicate charges.
One attempt to mitigate the concerns associated with the exchange of financial information relates to the creation of third-party intermediary accounts. In accordance with this embodiment, a third-party service provider can establish specialized transactional accounts that are backed by a financial account, such as a checking account at a bank, a credit card account, a stored value card account, etc. If both parties to a financial transaction maintain specialized transactional accounts, the parties can freely exchange their transactional account information, in the form of an account identifier, which allows the service provider to debit/credit each respective account. In various alternatives, the service provider can adopt additional security in establishing the specialized transactional accounts and/or additional security in verifying proposed transactions to reduce fraudulent or erroneous transactions. Nevertheless, current approaches to facilitating transactions can become deficient in the representation of the specialized transaction account as a numerical account number. Furthermore, current approaches to the processing of transactions utilizing specialized transaction account numbers are not easily configurable by the account holder. For example, account holders typically do not have the ability to configure their conventional transaction account, such as by automatically configuring acceptance of transactions, limiting transaction exposure, and the like.